Early signs of a great in­tern

Great in­terns are the best. But the qual­i­ties that set them apart, make them more suc­cess­ful, and make your work life a whole lot eas­ier, can be dif­fi­cult to iden­tify.

While per­son­al­ity traits are formed from an early age and fixed by early adult­hood, emo­tional in­tel­li­gence can change and im­prove over the years. Now what sets great in­terns apart from the rest is their abil­ity to ap­ply emo­tional in­tel­li­gence skills to their ev­ery­day work life.

They are not af­ter in­stant grat­i­fi­ca­tion: a great in­tern al­ways strives to work be­yond the bound­aries of what they are hired to do. they are never ones to say “that is out of my job de­scrip­tion”. they are not in­ti­mated by new chal­lenges nor do they feel en­ti­tled to any­thing. they know that if in the be­gin­ning they put in the work, in the end they will re­ceive the recog­ni­tion and com­pen­sa­tion.

They are coura­geous: When an in­tern is not afraid to speak up when oth­ers are; whether they want to ask a seem­ingly sim­ple ques­tion or they want to chal­lenge an ex­ec­u­tive de­ci­sion, you can rest as­sured that your in­tern is a keeper. How­ever, with that said, they al­ways know to think be­fore they speak. In other words, they bal­ance their courage with com­mon sense and tim­ing.

they know there is al­ways room for im­prove­ment: Com­pla­cency and lazi­ness are never part of a great in­tern’s work life. they have an un­shak­able be­lief that things can be im­proved, and you know what? they are right. they know that there’s never such a thing as good enough, when it comes to their per­sonal growth. even when things are go­ing well, they are mo­ti­vated to keep on go­ing. Great in­terns ap­ply this be­lief to their pro­fes­sional lives too — there is al­ways a way to im­prove the way one or the other sys­tem works.

They are re­spon­si­ble: Speak to any man­ager and they will tell you that one phrase they hate to hear is “it’s not my fault”. these words do not ex­ist in a great in­tern’s vo­cab­u­lary. they are ac­count­able for ev­ery­thing they do, whether the re­sults are good or bad. and when some­thing does go wrong, they make sure that their mis­takes are brought to man­age­ment’s at­ten­tion rather cross­ing their fin­gers and hop­ing that no one finds out.

They are mar­ketable: While mar­ketable can mean many things to many peo­ple, in the work en­vi­ron­ment it means that in­ter­nally, awe­some in­terns have an aura that gives off pos­i­tive vibes to those they work with, and makes them like­able. Ex­ter­nally, it means man­age­ment can trust that they will rep­re­sent the com­pany well. Man­agers know they will be able to send out their in­terns to meet with clients without wor­ry­ing about what they will say.

They can han­dle con­flict: they nei­ther seek to start any squab­bles nor do they run away from them ei­ther. Great in­terns can main­tain their com­po­sure and keep their cool when bring­ing across their po­si­tions. they stand firm against any per­sonal at­tacks and never use tac­tic them­selves.

In clos­ing, there’s no greater feel­ing than know­ing that you’ve scored your­self the best of the best. But even if you’ve made a great hire, you need to en­sure you check in with your in­tern and help them in reach­ing their goals. af­ter all, they are new to the in­dus­try and with your help, they can learn a lot